“Won’t people be looking for him?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time he’s taken off without telling anyone. He’s a world-famous nutjob anyway, and by the time anybody figures out he’s really gone, the evidence’ll be cold.”
“Where’s the gun?” I ask, the brilliant idea being that I’ll take it from her and call 911 like a sane person. When she produces it I lunge for her, and to my utter and complete astonishment she fires at the floor next to my feet, drilling a jagged hole into one of the tiles and scattering dusty shards in all directions. I drop the cell and she kicks it out of reach.
“Fucking hell, Cherie. Way to wake up the neighbors.”
“I knew you were going to try and take the gun. Soon as you asked for it. Now, you listen.” She raises the gun so it’s pointing at my face rather than my belly. “You fucked me while he lay here dying, and that makes you my accomplice.”
Rather than pointing out the flaws in her logic, I concentrate on placating her. In between our words I discover that I can actually hear the thin whistle of Gary’s breath, and it occurs to me that I’d better get help to him sooner rather than later.
“All right, then, take his feet,” I tell her.
“I’m not putting down this gun.”
“I can’t carry 350 pounds of Gary up those steps all by myself.”
“We’re going downstairs, to the garage. Gary’s got a Hummer.”
“Hummer’s no good, it’s too conspicuous.”
“Fuck conspicuous, you do what I tell you. Take him by the feet and drag him.”
I start pulling him toward the staircase. It’s harder than I thought it would be, hauling a sixth of a ton of deadweight across the tile, harder still when I reach the carpet of the living room. Then Cherie starts down the steps ahead of me to turn the light on downstairs, and I step over Gary and kick her right in the ass. She stumbles—did I mention those heels?—and when she hits the landing with a squeal of pain and outrage, she twists around and fires at me. I’m already headed up that other set of stairs to the front door, though, and as soon as I cross the threshold I haul ass down the sidewalk toward my car. There are low-hanging branches in my way, and ducking under one of them I lose my balance and hit the sidewalk, scraping the hell out of my right elbow.
“Get back here, you fucking coward!” I hear when she gets outside, and I keep sprinting, secure in my assumption that she’s not crazy enough to open fire on the street.
The first shot hits the car parked in front of mine, and I dig in my pocket for my keys, then fumble with them for what feels like about a minute and a half before I manage to open the Saturn. I haven’t got the door closed yet when I turn the engine over, and the next shot shatters my driver’s side window. Wetting my pants, I say a silent prayer of thanks that I took a dump before I left Burberry’s. Chugging into reverse I jump the curb, and then I ram it into gear and make a U-turn, swiping an SUV, the passenger-side mirror making a horrible scraping sound against it. In the rearview I can see her standing there in the middle of the street, taking aim, and I swerve to my right as she fires again. It misses me by a mile.
The cell is back on Gary’s kitchen floor and there are hardly pay phones in L.A. anymore, not in this kind of neighborhood anyway. But there’s a supermarket at Sunset and Via de la Paz, and on a hunch I pull into the lot and find a pair of them mounted next to the doors. My engine is still running when I make the call to 911, and I can hear a siren coming from the south. When the operator asks me the nature of my emergency, I’m momentarily at a loss. I tell her Gary’s address and she says they’ve already got a prowl car on the way to the street after reports of shots.
Tongue-tied, I manage to get across that they’ll need an ambulance too, and that an armed, dangerous, and crazy woman is probably on the premises, cranked to the gills. “She’s an actress,” I add, in case additional precautions need to be taken.
After hanging up I slump against the wall, illuminated by my headlights, the breeze soothing on my wet pants front. I wonder how long until the sun comes up, and in the distance to the east I hear another siren approach, this one of a slightly different timbre than the first. I can feel the tension start to drain from my shoulders, and I put my weight back onto my feet just as I catch sight of a vaguely familiar, battered red Corolla pulling into the lot and heading toward me, the face behind the wheel bearing down on mine, jaws clenched so tight they’re bulging, and all I can think is how pretty she still looks.
A
s I pulled into my driveway I saw my cousin Veronica sitting on the bungalow porch steps with her face buried in her hands. She heard my shoes snapping acorns on the path and looked up, stood, and came toward me. Her tank top revealed the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. A rolled-up mat stuck out of her satchel. I tossed her my windbreaker: cool damp ocean air was coming up the street. I thought maybe she’d come over after yoga in nearby Venice to see if I wanted to go surfing—something we used to do as teenagers, on afternoons after she tutored me in math—but her eyes were bloodshot.
What’s wrong? I said. I noticed something blue on the side of her face and moved her hair aside. Did he hit you?
She flinched. No.
Your face is blue.
I told you, it wasn’t him.
Who, then?
Please, Tomas. I didn’t come over about this.
I crossed my arms. I asked her to explain. She glanced down as she fingered her satchel strap and told me she’d come to talk about her boy, Emerson.
She said, Manny went over and tried to confront the bully’s father, and he got beat up after carpool. Only a few blocks from school.
Some kid has been bullying Emerson? I said. My hands fisted, the pulse hot in my knuckles.
Yeah.
How long has this been going on?
Two months, I think. That’s when we started seeing bruises.
And you didn’t tell me?
Sorry, she said.
I bit my lip, tasted warm blood, looked down my street. In the June overcast, no shadows cast on the silvery asphalt, but the glare was enough to make me squint. Gulls squawked overhead.
Where does it happen? I said.
I don’t know. At school, we think.
And the teachers?
They don’t do anything.
Nothing? I thought they were big on PC stuff nowadays, teaching tolerance for people who are different.
Veronica rolled her eyes. She said, They talked to the kid we think is the ringleader, Harley Douglas. They talked to his parents. But nobody actually saw anything, and Emerson won’t say that Harley hit him, though he’s the one who picks on him the most. The principal promised to investigate.
I felt the heat in my face; my cousin did not come over much anymore, and now I knew what had brought her today. Emerson had a metabolic disorder that impaired his balance, sensitivity, and muscle strength, and caused developmental delays.
Emerson can’t really even talk, I told her.
He can, she said with slight annoyance; she shoved her clenched hands into my windbreaker pockets. Just not well. He claims he’s been falling on the playground.
And you’re sure he’s not?
Yesterday someone sliced his leg braces. Here, look.
She pulled them out of her backpack. The braces, a contraption of plastic parts held together by joints and straps, had been cut clean.
Motherfuckers, I said.
Tomas.
What did the parents say?
They didn’t believe us. Said we were making false accusations against their son. Then Manny went over to confront the guy, after he noticed Emerson’s slit braces. The father’s a soccer-dad from hell. Goes to all the school games. Eggs his kid on to commit fouls, yells at the other parents. The jerk beat up Manny in front of Emerson and Harley. He looks terrible. Needed twenty stitches.
Did he file an assault report?
She shook her head.
It might make them take you more seriously.
He thinks he can handle it by himself. But he can’t, she said, then shrugged and turned away.
I clicked my tongue and shook my head. You shouldn’t of sent Manny. Confrontation isn’t his thing.
I didn’t send him, he went over himself, she said. Veronica seemed irritated, crossed her arms and glanced away.
Wait here, I said.
Where are you going?
I need to get something from the house.
She yelled after me what was I doing, but I kept on thumping up the paint-flaking front steps. I slammed through the door and swept through the hall like a sudden gust. I moved into the back where my brother and girlfriend and their daughter lived, my brother who refuses to talk to me, blames me for having been a bad influence when we were teens. I rifled through his closet and drawers, looking, and I thought about Emerson, who until last year had used a walker to get around. He was growing stunted for his age, with his trunk becoming shorter in proportion to his legs. Veronica and Manny were in denial. They spoke as if his cheerful laugh wasn’t a reflection of mild mental retardation, as if his slurred speech could really only be due to limp muscles in his neck and body. As if he’d someday win sports, avoid teasing, charm girls into giving him female companionship.
Tomas, what are you doing? my mother said.
She stood in Gabe’s doorway; her hair was messy, she had probably been napping.
Nothing.
What are you looking for? she said. Gabe will be home from work soon.
You want to help me look?
She hesitated. For what?
Never mind, I said. I found it in the bedside table, took the icepick out, and palmed it, felt the weight of the wooden handle, the thinness of its blade. It looked like an enormous hypodermic needle.
She blocked the doorway.
Tomas, you said you wouldn’t! she said. You’re on probation. You said you were finished with that life. My mother grimaced; she had suffered through my days of adolescent rage, my anger at being a halfie.
I went to the rear window, slid it open sideways, popped out the flimsy screen. I started to step through, but then paused and turned to her.
It’s not about my old life, I told her. I’m not going back.
You said.
It’s about Veronica’s child.
She had begun crying but stopped now. She furrowed her forehead as she looked at me. Veronica was like a daughter to her. We spent five years living in my
tita’s
house after coming here from the Philippines.
A kid beat him up at school. And Manny got beat up by the kid’s father when he confronted him.
She touched the wrinkled lapel on her robe as if she knew it needed to be smoothed, but she didn’t smooth it. Somebody hurt Emerson?
I nodded.
She looked at me for a long moment, and then stepped out of the doorway to let me pass.
I drove over to Veronica and Manny’s apartment. As I headed north, the dilapidating bungalows of my inland Mar Vista neighborhood gave way to better-kept houses and lusher streets. They lived in what used to be the crappy part of Santa Monica, along the southern border, in the same rentcontrolled apartment Manny’s mother raised him in, up on the once-seedy hillside roads near Rose Street, just inside the Santa Monica line. When I was smaller, gangs from nearby Venice and Mar Vista claimed the blocks as territory, and I’d notice their cars patrol it, though most of the white people living in the small houses had no idea. But the neighborhood was changing. Many of the bungalows and apartment complexes had been torn down and replaced by trendy condos.
Veronica was two years older than me. Like me, half Filipino—our moms are sisters—but she grew up in Santa Monica north of Montana and went to a private alternative school founded by hippies in the ’70s, full of rich white kids now, mostly affluent and movie industry. She tutored me in math—would come down south to wherever we lived at the time, in the triangle of south Santa Monica off Pico where all the Mexicans and blacks lived, the house Mom rented in Mar Vista, the apartment in Venice.
After we finished the schoolwork, Veronica would reward me with play. She took me and my brother Gabe everywhere—to the beach, the parks, movies, malls. She was a fun tomboy—wasn’t afraid to play basketball in the driveway or on the courts across the street from our church. We played rough volleyball on the sand. I did well in school mostly to please her.
After she left California for Reed College in Oregon, I got into trouble. I’m sure Veronica thought it was because she left, but I was enmeshed in adolescence, a new school, new neighborhood, and I probably would have ended up gangbanging even if she’d stuck around. People act surprised when they find out I got involved in Chicano gangs at St. Dominic’s—a white liberal Catholic parish. But it gave me the respect I needed after being dogged by both whites and Asians. I knew Manny at St. Dominic’s. He was a bookish guy, tall, thin, with a chip on his bony shoulder. A Jesuit’s pet. He disapproved of my dressing like my Mexican friends, even passing as one, thought I was ashamed of being half-Filipino. We were the only Filipinos at school.
The truth is, he may have been born in Quezon City, but he grew up in Fremont and Santa Monica and is as suburban as you get. He was as much a poseur as I was.
One day he gave an oral report on his native country. During the Q-and-A, I pointed out an inaccuracy in the way he pronounced a Tagalog word. People laughed. He reddened and glared at me. A month later he reported that I had turned in a paper written by another classmate, and I got an F.
When Veronica flew back for family visits, she seemed shocked to see me with my Spanish tattoos, the business I’d started training attack dogs, the shaved head. Once, at a restaurant with her mom and dad, I took her aside and showed her my pistol—as if that would impress her. But unlike the other relatives who gave up on me, she still came over to our neighborhood, picked me up, and we’d go surfing together. At Bay Street if we were lazy, or up the coast to Zeros or Topanga if she felt like the drive. An old bond. But she was different now, too. Something about the confidence with which she moved on her board, the swell of her breasts against her black tank top, the beads she let dangle around her wrists and neck even in water, an impervious indifference to the stares of local surfers. We’d come back, shower, and walk to the Rose Café for breakfast. She was a tomboy but nonetheless drew stares, with her long bourbon-colored legs, her pretty half-Asian face with its high cheekbones. The neighborhood may have become trendy, with new oceanview condos nearby, but the blocks around my place still had black kids selling pot to people in fancy cars. Veronica drew catcalls from the Mexican laborers waiting for work; yet none of it fazed her.
I was surprised when she married Manny. He’d gone to UCLA and worked as a youth counselor while majoring in Social Work. The idea that an awkward man like him could help “at-risk youth” was a joke, I can tell you from my vantage point—they needed the mentoring of someone they could relate to, someone who had gone down that road and been pulled back by a guiding hand. It didn’t seem to work out, because not long after they had Emerson, he quit—or lost?—his job to become a stay-at-home dad.
We’re keeping Emerson at home for a while, Veronica told me when he was old enough to enter kindergarten; she worked as the manager of a popular Mexican chain restaurant. We’re a bit worried about the other kids, she said.
He’s going to have to deal with school sometime, I said.
I know, she said, But he’s still a bit behind.
As if he’ll ever fully catch up, I thought. But every time I came over, the kid laughed at my face, grabbed his walker, and hurried my way, clattering that metal contraption across the floor and slamming against banged-up furniture and walls in the process.
Tito
Tomas! he’d scream, laughing.
Hey, sunshine, let’s go out for a walk, I’d say, grabbing him and lifting him into a bear hug.
Veronica had stopped taking Emerson out to the playground, because he couldn’t keep up with the energetic activities and ended up alone. And she resented the stares of the mothers and nannies, the other children especially. Manny, to his credit, believed this to be wrong. He insisted on dragging Emerson out to the parks and malls. He insisted that other people were fucked up to stare. They argued over it. She’d search the neighborhood to find him. They screamed at each other in public.
Manny tried to make Emerson use his walker
everywhere
. The neurologists and PTs told them it would keep his muscles stretched. But Emerson refused. He threw tantrums at malls, dropped down to his knees and cried, drawing the stares of passersby who looked at Veronica as if she were abusing her disabled child.
Go on, leave us, I would tell her. Go shopping.
She’d hesitate but walk away, letting me kneel down beside her boy. I’d smell his sweaty, musty hair. I cherished his boy-smell, these sweet moments, the joy and sorrow I drew from these fleeting seconds of male bonding of which I wanted more. I would whisper in his ear, make him laugh, coax him with promises of ice cream—and have him using his walker in no time.
He let me take him to Douglas Park, played on the slides and swings, tossed bread at the ducks in the pond, walked over grass. The park had changed since I was a kid. Gabe and Veronica and I used to wade through dirty pond water, catching tiny frogs and tadpoles in the reeds. Now the pond had been converted into a fancy Japanese water garden, complete with babbling streams, wooden benches, landscaped boulders. Even the ducks looked cleaner. The kid’s play area had new bright play equipment, handicap accessible, and the mothers seemed different now, too. Thinner, more stylish.
Manny resented my ease with Emerson. The boy let me take him to the basketball court across the street from St. Dominic’s after Sunday mass. Manny watched with jealousy as Emerson used his walker on the crowded court, without shame or self-consciousness, and let the black teenagers lift him up to dunk the ball.
Nothing I did was good enough for that chump. After I got saved and became a youth minister at an evangelical strip-mall church in Culver City—where I ran the boys’ club, as well as addiction recovery groups—you’d have thought he’d come round to me. But he never did.
I drove my truck up to their apartment complex and started circling the block, looking for a parking spot on the narrow side streets. I smoldered over exactly how to do what I wanted to do. Remembering my mother’s worried face, I thought, Hold on, don’t do anything rash, you’re risking a lot of hurt and pain here, will let down a lot of people if you get caught breaking probation. They’d put you away for a long time. When you got out, how old would Emerson be? But then I remembered his slit braces in Veronica’s hands and that was it.